Review: 'Hurry Up Tomorrow' is a disaster of a music movie, a vanity project for The Weeknd with abstract visuals and jumbled storytelling

Somewhere between failed experiment and vanity project sits “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” a tediously arty mess of a movie in which the fledgling actor Abel Tesfaye — better known to the world as the musical star The Weeknd — tries to get you to buy his album while also arguing how horrible it is to be a rock star.

Tesfaye’s character here happens to be called The Weeknd, and he’s an internationally famous performer who fills arenas with adoring fans wanting to hear his sing his songs. Backstage, though, he’s a miserable mess, listening to the voice message left behind by the woman who’s leaving him. There’s an entourage just out of view, and the only person we see on The Weeknd’s side is his smarmy Irish manager, played by Barry Keoghan.

As director Trey Edward Shults (“Waves,” “It Comes at Night,” “Krisha”) follows The Weeknd through his self-inflicted spiral of depression, he also follows another character — played by Jenna Ortega — whose connection to the rocker is not clear. This woman, called Amina in the credits and nowhere else, is busy walking through a remote house in Montana, pouring out a can of gasoline and setting it on fire.

Shults spends a long time creating artfully abstract images of Tesfaye in his funk, while Ortega’s character drives away from the burning house and into the night. The script — by Shults, Tesfaye and Reza Fahim — is so vague that a viewer might surmise that Ortega’s character is the woman who was breaking up with The Weeknd via voice message. But, at the 40-minute mark, we see them meet for the first time.

There’s an instant connection, and the two seem to be falling in love without ever saying the words. After a night in a fancy hotel room, away from The Weeknd’s manager, Amina finds The Weeknd to be distant and self-involved — nothing like the man who fell in love with her the night before. Then things take a turn toward Stephen King’s “Misery.”

So, as that synopsis indicates, not much in “Hurry Up Tomorrow” makes a lick of sense. And if you were hoping hearing new cuts from The Weeknd’s new album — for which an ad and a music video are served to viewers before the movie “officially” begins — will find the songs dreary, particularly compared to The Weeknd’s better-known hits, which Amina comically dissects before a tied-up Mr. Weeknd.

Shults is a gifted director, and his arresting imagery works to hold the viewer’s attention when everything else fails to do that. Here’s hoping he will bounce back from this tiresome misfire, which is as much of an endurance test as — if you believe Tesfaye — being a ridiculously famous rock star.

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‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’

★1/2

Opens Friday, May 16, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for language throughout, drug use, some bloody violence and brief nudity. Running time: 105 minutes.